Krishna Consciousness in Japan, China and South-East Asia-The Monk’s Podcast 149-Kavicandra Maharaj

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
It’s a great honour.
I never expected such an honour. My honour to have your association. And since I think the first time we met and talked was in Mayapur, where you shared a lot of your experiences and your ideas about Western outreach.
And again we met in Singapore. That time also we discussed. That time I had not started the Monks Podcast.
Since then I have been thinking that I should invite you. Fortunately, it worked out. Thank you, especially after the Anmarshami and Prabhupada Parents Festival.
Things must have been hectic for you. Thank you for sparing your time, Maharaj. Yeah, we had two big festivals here, a lot of festivals.
So Maharaj, broadly, so we were thinking we could discuss the spread of Krishna Consciousness, especially in Asia or Southeast Asia, because I believe that is an area where you are putting a lot of your energy. So do I understand right? You are the GBC. Which are the areas broadly where you share Krishna Consciousness? I’m GBC, officially of Japan, along with Bhanu Swami.
Thailand with Jayapataka Swami. Singapore with Jayapataka Swami. Indonesia with Ramayana Swami.
And I’ve been going to China a lot, but I’m not GBC there. I’m also GBC for Vietnam and those countries, Cambodia but we haven’t done much there. So Maharaj, if I understand right, you are you are from America and you were introduced in America.
So how did you become, how did your main service area become another part of the world entirely? Well, let’s see, after Prabhupada’s disappearance, I went to Bombay with Tamal Krishna Maharaj. And then, after some time there in Juhu, it was, you know, those times are very chaotic in Iskcon. And I went to Fiji.
So I was there one year and that was very nice. Of course, the Indian community was very receptive, very simple people there. And we didn’t get much with the Fijians for various reasons.
Although they loved Kirtan and Hainan. Then I went back to America and the chaos was too much for me. And I hadn’t never thought about Japan so much in my life.
Because when I was a kid, made in Japan that, you know, it’s going to break right away. But when I was in Fiji, I saw Japanese cars and Japanese everything, you know. So I started thinking what kind of country is that.
So I thought if I go there, you know, there’s no devotees, there’s no chaos. I can just preach there. So I told Ramaswari, you know, I would go to Japan.
So I went there. It took a while to get a visa. And there was a few devotees there, not much happening.
But somehow or other, you know, the movement was still growing a lot. And I was very fired up and we made some devotees and we, you know, just turned out. So there I was and then I became GVC of Japan in 87.
And then things just happened, you know, I got Thailand and then Bali came up. Somebody just said take this and then Singapore. So I ended up, you know, spending a lot of time there.
And when I was first in Japan, I used to go to Hong Kong a lot with Dhammakrishna and so later I went to China and got pretty involved there also, but as a preacher, not a GVC. They have very good organised GVC people there. So that’s how I got there.
That means you’re almost been there for now 45 years because you said soon after. Yeah, I went in about 81 to Japan. Okay.
You know, I used to stop in the other places on the way to India actually and they just kind of came about. Oh, okay. So do you still have a base in America or you keep mostly travelling and in these parts of the world? This first time I stayed in America for a long time.
I would just come through to get visas for Africa. It’s the only place we can get them. But, you know, I kind of felt like maybe I could help out.
So here I am now in New York. Oh, okay. So overall we, I mean, by we I refer to the mainstream ISKCON discourse.
There’s a lot of discussion about how Krishna Consciousness in the West is almost, if not dying out, it is diminishing at a speed of increasing concern. So, and there are a lot of discussions about what needs to be done to adjust that or whether we need to change certain things. But generally we don’t discuss much about Krishna Consciousness in other parts of the world so much how it is growing or where it is not growing.
So do you think is this primarily because in the West Krishna Consciousness was flourishing at one time and then it has gone down and because Prabhupada considered America to be the most important country. So there is concern about Krishna Consciousness in the West, but that level of concern, the status of Krishna Consciousness doesn’t seem to be there for other parts of the world. Of course, I am speaking based only on my experience, but what are your thoughts about this? Yeah, but some other parts of the world, you know, it’s growing really really big.
Yes, Maharaj. When I went to the Middle East, I was amazed how much it is growing in the Middle East. Yes, Maharaj.
It’s the Indian people though. Yeah, of course, that is true. So when you are saying some other parts, are you referring to Asia also in the areas where you… But say like Japan, when I first went, it wasn’t like we got thousands of devotees but we got like 10 or 12 really strong ones and we did a lot of book distribution then they had they called it the bubble economy, you know, it was growing then the bubble burst.
At the same time, they had this crazy cult which they called the new home religion or something and they got like unlimited publicity about the cult and it was a very really a cult and made people really afraid of religion and that went on for many years with publicity everywhere, you know, every television, if you turn on television, there would be three shows about out of eight channels about this cult and what they were doing and so it really slowed us down, the devotees got afraid to go out, people would always think we were in that, you know, the Japanese lump things together so religion is religion, you know, so we really slowed down but now somehow the last couple years, the young people are not so much aware about that anymore. They’ve heard about it but it’s no big deal so all of a sudden we’re starting to get a lot of young people. They just gave me the report and finally got, you know, Bhagavad Gita printed, they had they distributed since they came which was not so long ago but they distributed 7,000 Bhagavad Gita’s already devotees got really It’s impressive mostly so yoga teachers and yoga students but a few others and they just really broke it open and so that’s very encouraging and so we do have activities all in different parts of Japan.
Tokyo is a big temple Indians built but then we have devotees preaching in Nagoya to some extent, Osaka pretty big and Fukuoka, not Fukuoka Kyushu, not Kyushu Okinawa Okinawa very big It’s Japan but it’s not exactly Japan people are much different so that’s gone. China just took off and One minute if you don’t mind you know, I would like to respond to some of your points and I’d like to understand them better. So Japan if we, this is quite fascinating from what at least whatever I read of Prabhupada’s times Prabhupada went there and he did do some preaching over there but you said that over the years it has been growing and you said sometime we were characterised like a cult but now that we have outgrown that label was that what you’re saying and that’s why young people are becoming open and attracted to the yoga yoga channel Yeah, everything changes, you know so the whole Japanese people have changed a lot because like when I first went there weren’t very many foreigners there just some American English teachers and they could make big, big money there so a lot of, you know, Americans were there teaching English.
Some of them were devotees that left to teach English but now there’s foreigners everywhere. So many Chinese and they’re working there, living there, studying there and then because they had such a restriction on families they had to import a lot of labour from Southeast Asia so it’s much opened up and then they have all the American movies and television and Japanese started travelling a lot so the young people are much different now so the ones that are coming are we don’t have an ashram really but they’re just many of them are yoga teachers they have their own studios and they are very influential to tell the students to read the Bhagavad Gita so they’re selling them by the boxes so one of our one brahmachari has been going door to door to the Buddhist temples for many years and made a lot of their friends and now some of them are buying whole boxes of Bhagavad Gita they’re very rich they’re Buddhist monks Oh, Buddhist monks are ordering the Bhagavad Gita? Yeah, they’re buying them by the box to distribute Why would they want to distribute? That’s amazing means they don’t another culture, another tradition or how do they sell it? You know, they’re just some of them are philosophically inclined and they want to know something in China there’s Buddhist monks in Thailand also senior ones they read the Bhagavad Gita they don’t give it to everybody but they study it so these things are happening, things are opening up people are not so caught up in their things this boy just told me they had a really big offering for Vyasapuja this year, they’ve never done before like 180 preparations so he took it around and the monks loved it that’s amazing, this was where Maharaj? In Tokyo, around Tokyo. Oh my God I mean he used to have boxes and boxes of maps to find all these temples way up in the mountains they would give donations but gradually you know he made friends with them and they read the books and some of them are just and we met some monks in China that are also like that, they actually study Bhagavad Gita, they chant Krishna and China is a different story.
Yes Maharaj let’s focus on Japan then we’ll move to China, I’m just fascinated by this so is this, you do consider this like an interfaith initiative or is it more of a outreach initiative because generally people committed to other traditions when they take our books, do we expect them to become devotees or do we expect them to appreciate us more so that more doors may open for us to do outreach or how do you see this as contributing to the growth of Krishna consciousness, it’s you, I would say remarkable and even unique but how do you see this moving forward? Well I have you know kind of a simple tenant, I always book distribution, book distribution, that’s how I was brought up you know and Prabhupada was always book distribution and this will spread the movement so somehow when I was first there Japanese, you know they’re Japanese and they work hard and just a small group but they went really wild for book distribution and for a few years we distributed so many books up until 87 when this cult thing hit and it wasn’t that they were focussing on us, it was this other cult, they got a lot of publicity and so the Japanese people were just afraid of anything religious and they would think where these people didn’t know, you know were completely different, so book distribution went way down and then but the books were there you know we distributed so many books so somehow or other in the last four or five years people started coming forward wanting to get initiated for a long time we didn’t get any new devotees but then the Indians came, also when I came there were no Indians in Japan just one small group, two cities, a few restaurants most of them were cooks in the restaurants but with the IT thing in the year 2000 many many Indians came and that’s good in one sense but then it also it’s not easy to mix the Indians and the Japanese oh okay it’s just the nature of people you know, psychological nature, Japanese they like the monogamy but now because there’s so many foreigners everywhere you go, Russians, Chinese so many that it’s not like that anymore with the young people, they’re used to being around foreigners so they’re comfortable so I just took it as a result of all that book distribution, it came later you know somehow the results are coming we don’t know that some of these people’s parents had the books in their house or something but we know it works so now they just got on fire with the Bhagavad Gita and now the challenges is we’re behind on book production, we only have one volume of the Bhagavatam you know, it’s kind of depressing we have to get to work on that, but now that they’re really enthusiastic, it’s happening so it’s just the whole atmosphere of the country it used to be that people had great respect for monks and you just say I’m a monk and they like to give a donation not so much care about the book now there’s been so many corrupt monks and so many things people are not like that so much anymore but there’s actually a lot of people really interested in some knowledge spiritual knowledge so it’s another world in America I’ve noticed the same thing you know some people are really interested in it serious serious I was walking down the street here in New York a couple of days ago and one guy, young boy came up and said, you remember me? I said I saw you, I remember your face, I saw you at Union Square I’m reading the Bhagavad Gita, I really like it and then yesterday I was walking along and one guy was coming in no shirt kind of like, you know, I don’t know what, nice looking boy but he’s cold out, no shirt smoking a cigarette and he saw me jumped up there, Hare Krishna, Hare Ram I love you, I love you so, you know things are happening in Japan it’s just like when I just heard this recent book score, I thought she made a mistake when she said 7,000, I thought she meant 700, but just in their Janmasami Marathon they distributed 2,000 Gitas or something which we haven’t done that in the last 20 years books have been everybody wants to do it now, all the new devotees want to distribute books and even the Indians are doing it that’s wonderful Maharaj, as the Indians see the Japanese are coming they get enlivened you know and they feel more faith in their culture yes Maharaj, that’s amazing, so, 2-3 questions, first is that so it seems almost like even in these countries, in Japan it’s something similar to what is happening in India, if you go to the rural places still if you’re just a sadhu people respect, they may not have money to give donations for books but they respect and they take books also but the younger generation who are into software and the whole new since 1990s onwards India became liberalised so now we have younger generation with wealth and many of the problems that come with say increasing liberalisation so they are interested in spirituality from a very different perspective from the traditional cultural perspective so even in India we are seeing that there is a demographic shift or you could say almost like a psychological shift in the kind of demographic we are attracting for 20-30 years ago and what we are attracting now so it seems that this is almost like a global trend so do you see this increased opportunity or increased interest so are there some challenges because it seems that as people become more whatever modernised, westernised, post-modernised they seem to be sceptical about institutionalised religion so is that an obstacle in Japan also do we, if we say we are from India and we are practising Krishna Bhakti does that obstruct them or intrigue them or you present ourselves primarily as yogis or how do we present ourselves I don’t know how these devotees are presenting themselves okay we did all our book distribution back always in devotee clothes and shaved heads and everything people liked that still they don’t respect monks like they used to but still the pious people do most of the cultivation of these new devotees is done in the homes of the older devotees who got after I remember I had friends with one professor when I was first there he was the dean of the Tokyo foreign language university specialised in Bengali he was translating books into Bengali dictionary, Japanese Bengali dictionary and he was very very favourable but he said Japanese won’t mature until they are like 50 years old so somehow or other the devotees who were very enthusiastic book distributors when they were young and they had householders but they just started preaching at home and cultivating people in a very casual way family life play with the kids play with the cat, whatever they have cooking in the house because in the house the guests can help and do everything in the temple there is all this formality it’s hard to cultivate people and we don’t have a big compound where you can go sit off somewhere so that type of cultivation is what’s really working and then they all pick up on it, it’s kind of like a namatha bhakti-bhiksha informal at the moment but it’s just by these friendly relationships also by kirtan a lot of musicians came and a couple of the devotees are super good musicians and they just organise kirtans and get everybody chanting like in Japan when they made kirtan mela they didn’t just invite like a few superstars they had everybody chant for 15 minutes every guest, everybody and they really love it they really get into it and they become very close and intimate that way I like that programme and of course prasadam cooking classes are bringing in a few people one Japanese manaji is super cooking class and another Indian manaji also is teaching cooking in big big Japanese cooking schools so different things like that work running the institution is with the internal conflicts between devotees is always troublesome so if I understand that what you are saying is that there are multiple channels which devotees are opening and different channels are working in different ways overall what is the main obstacle you see for if you focus on Japan primarily I know that there was some influence of Indian culture in Malaysia, Indonesia and other parts of South East Asia but is there some influence of Indian culture in Japan we could say Buddhism is there but Buddhism I think it went through China to Japan and it became quite transformed from its roots so how is India and Indian wisdom or Indian culture overall seen in Japan I don’t know exactly but you know we’d always say this is Indian philosophy in the books and people you know lot of people really interested in that okay and you never know like some of the Japanese devotees or Japanese people don’t like Indian food I said why are there so many Indian restaurants you know but they all have their different ideas so I just try to encourage anyone who wants to do anything just do it you know whatever technique they want to use whatever style they want to use because whatever it is it works you know so they’re having a lot of music classes one girl had like 12 people learning harmonium at the same time mudanga classes harmonium classes and somehow they’re really coming forward and there’s a few other groups there one is a group called Bhakti Marg Swami Vishwananda or something I don’t know where he’s from I heard he might have been in ISKCON at one point somewhere so they talk about Bhagavad Gita but they don’t have a Bhagavad Gita okay so they buy from us you know oh okay so people are hearing about the Bhagavad Gita a lot somehow or other it’s become well known but that’s in America so it’s just mysterious but I just personally find it you know I thought right away when I saw your questions the biggest difficulty is our own false ego and prejudices of course in foreign countries there’s a language that’s interesting you said false ego and prejudices can you explain what prejudices in this context yeah well we go and we think oh these people are like this these people are like that you know we have prejudices can you help it we have to overcome that they have prejudices so when you say if we have prejudices can you give example of what our prejudices might be in this context well just to think Japanese people are like this these people because they’re different you know for preaching there’s no difference anywhere I’ve been you just preach the philosophy of the soul and the supreme soul and everybody likes it but when you get people and you want to organise and manage every culture has such a different way of doing things and you know it might not seem right to us no this is not the way to do it they might think your way of doing it is not Japanese or not Balinese or not African or wherever I go you know but if we can just like Prabhupada he only saw the soul and everyone and he never considered what kind of body they had or what kind of background they had or all he saw is everyone in Chandra Krishna so he got through to anyone immediately and he could bring everyone together so we had to seek that out and when you go in a foreign country of course they have experience sometimes of being exploited you know they’re expecting something so this is a factor for sure yes but Tanya and Lord Nishananda are unlimitedly merciful so we can depend on them so if I understand right what you’re saying Maharaj is that here when you’re talking about prejudices it is more of our conceptions of of how these some people even as devotees we may have certain stereotypes about about how different people may be from different parts of the world and those stereotypes might come in the way of our giving them a proper opportunity for sharing Krishna consciousness like for instance I go to Africa yes now I don’t know how much you know about America but my mother is from rural Georgia that’s the deep south so you know her parents I think even had slaves or almost slaves so I heard from her so many times these niggers you know I don’t want to repeat the words but these dirty these stupid this this that you know and then Krishna sends me to Africa and I have to not I pretty much got over it but if it ever a conflict comes I just those things are slashed in my head and I have to smash it down you know so there’s one example of how these things can influence but Japan you know not so much so Japan when you’re saying stereotypes you’re talking about something like something like that means we based on our own based on our own cultural upbringing we might get certain stereotypes it’s not that because of Krishna consciousness you get certain stereotypes rather it is by our past upbringing we might have certain stereotypes about certain people yeah like but you know fortunately we have our philosophy so if people hear the philosophy they hear they read like Prabhupada said when he got to America how can these people they’re absorbed in so much sense gratification if you go to Tokyo or something it’s just a bewildering place how much sense gratification everything works perfectly you know there’s never a hole in the road if any bump in the road they fix it at night and the trains are exactly on time and you know and everybody’s packed in like anything you know Tokyo is like the most densely populated city area in the world or something 5,000 people per square kilometre so they get along but not intimately they just have to live in such crowded conditions it’s a lot of anxiety but people want Krishna everybody wants Krishna so I’m just trying never say you should shun your body you know shun your body is a Buddhist so if but now the young people they’re very little you know Buddhist training or anything they never really study Buddhism and a lot of people a lot of them have been to India they really like India you know because they get relieved of all India’s so Maharaj overall how is your approach with respect to because you’re quite a lot of areas where you are the looking of you’re serving as a GBC so is it that devotees become inspired on their own to do certain things and then you broadly encourage them or do you give a vision and they implement it means is your overall approach like decentralised or centralised or because it’s even within South from what I can see Japan is one place and there are a lot of places so each of them may require a different approach or somewhat different approach so how do you how do you see your role in the outreach over there is that you give a vision and inspiration or you see yourself more as supervising what they are doing or you are also at the ground level actually like you said you are doing Harinam and other things in New York so do you Harinam distribution so how does it work because these are very broad countries and very I presume quite different cultures also well say Japan when I first went there there was a couple of Japanese devotees they were not very cooperative and there was one American trying to do things but he was working really hard outside trying to support everything and had three children but he couldn’t he had to go back to America and somehow some new devotees joined so there was nothing else to do except go for Harinam and you know distribute we didn’t have any books only one magazine but somehow Christian sent people and then we got some books done and so I had that vision more or less was just distribute the books you know because we need to get devotees and we did a lot of Harinam everybody and I was pretty energetic and I can’t even believe it when I think back but you know we did I went on book distribution a lot we went on Harinam every day and we had really nice festivals and stuff and it changed a lot things change like after this cult thing and then so many all of a sudden so many Indians are living there and they started coming to the temple and then they got inspired to get a new temple get a lot of Christian deities and everything so things change a lot and I didn’t have that much influence on anybody’s what it you know except to just try to preach so I just encourage everybody whatever they’re trying to do and I said going really off the rails which is not very often and I just the Japanese had a little trouble working you know internationally but I just encourage him preach you know appreciate Japanese people were in Japan you know Indians are point zero three zero zero three percent of the population or something but the temple it’s the huge percentage so but so they just really got into preaching and teaching Bhagavad Gita in the yoga schools and Kirtan seminars or something people like Kirtan it’s popular and all of a sudden they just started getting a lot of devotees so I just keep whipping you know do more to keep going and hope everybody else will follow their example which is happening Japanese are like really smart and when they get going on something they really get into it so you know if you get them chanting japa they really concentrate and then they get really purifying and they love Kirtan like everybody loves Kirtan and they all went and bought harmoniums and speakers to go and all these new ones and they’re mostly girls at first but now it’s some boys coming along oh that’s fascinating and so overall when we maybe we’ll discuss some more time about Japan and then we’ll move on to other topics other parts of the world so two things so does the in Japan when you mentioned earlier that people are more comfortable with say living outside the temple having their own families so so there were but you also mentioned that there have been Buddhist monks and so monkhood itself how significant is it a part of the part of the religious landscape or spiritual landscape presently are there some similarities and differences which people perceive between say ISKCON monks and Buddhist monks Bhakti Marg Maharaj was on a podcast with me and he mentioned that when he travels across Canada he does his walks and he says often people ask him when they say he’s a monk they they see monks as somewhat quite cool whereas Catholic priests are often associated with child abuse monks are seen as quite cool so he says people ask him whether do you do you know martial arts what all do you do so you don’t get that in Japan you don’t get that okay the Buddhist monks you know like most of them eat meat they drink their businessmen they get a lot of money they invest their money you know and they do rituals you know and every temple has a cemetery and people pay the monks to do ceremonies for their ancestors and stuff so but still people think you know they have an idea about monks but now I mean there’s no we have one brahmachari in Japan and when I first joined of course a few joined and they were brahmacharis but the rest of them all got married but he stayed brahmachari all this time 40 some years and still preaching distributing books and even though he’s 65 years old or something but he’s the only brahmachari yeah it’s not like we have a monk culture we don’t really have an ashram it’s a temple anymore we don’t have facility physical facility to do that and really cultivate people it’s good for festivals it’s good for you know coming and worshipping and all that but it’s formal and but in the home and that’s what they’re finding everywhere with this bhaktivriksha you know I know in England they had saved money in South London to build a temple or East London and they started the bhaktivriksha and they’d abandoned the idea of a temple because they were making so many devotees by all home programmes you know where you can really sit down one-on-one and small groups and really cultivate people and really get into the whole whatever they like to get into whether it’s kirtan or studying the bhagavad-gita one of our boys he’s householder he’s one of the senior devotees he’s getting so many yoga schools inviting him to give bhagavad-gita classes that’s fascinating so when you see yoga did yoga also become big recently or it has been big for a good amount of time also in the west in that part of Japan I don’t know how many years but it’s not such a long time that it just became everywhere yoga hot yoga, this yoga, that yoga you know and that’s kind of many practises like that and then when people if they actually practise asanas and they get a little advanced they get a little in this mode of goodness and they realise there’s much more to it what is the real and if teachers in the teacher training they always part of it is yoga bhagavad-gita philosophy in teacher training they study yoga philosophy and they study bhagavad-gita oh okay so they know bhagavad-gita and they want to know more so they don’t see us as sectarian but they see us as sources of teaching the message of the gita something like that I’m not sure how they see us okay it’s just that in the 45 years or so that I was there we would go and in the beginning I had a pretty big group like 15 devotees all young and jumping like crazy and we do harinam for a couple hours if anyone even looked at you you’d get excited like somebody even noticed us but now even we go one or two at a time people are coming up and what are you doing and what’s this all about this has been in the last 10 years it’s just changing a lot like everywhere in the world I guess especially after all these lockups and everything people are realising something’s got to be beyond all this transgratification it’s just working they’re fascinated we have online classes a lot of devotees come online classes are very nice because we can get people from all over Japan with just one temple I’m trying to tell them we need many temples they don’t have to be big the Indians kind of want big temples fancy temples but in order to preach we need many, many I was telling them if McDonald’s just had one gigantic McDonald’s that fits 5,000 people where would they be they have them everywhere Starbucks is everywhere we have to be like that it doesn’t have to be big just open up your house invite one person some of them even have people spend the night at their house living with them for a few weeks you can see them on these online kirtans kirtan for world peace the Japanese devotees some of them have become very popular okay so overall do you see there is some concern among some devotees that when people come from the yoga side they are already quite in bodily consciousness and whether they will rise upward or not that remains open to question but then another perspective also that in bodily consciousness they are actually getting appreciation of the broad Vedic culture and they are coming towards sattva so in that sense it is good so what are your thoughts on that? I haven’t heard that anybody is worried in some places they find you know it’s not like the temple is promoting yoga or something but we go to the yoga people and they are interested they love kirtan and you just tell them yoga is a yoga ladder you know and the asana is one step pranayama then dhyana then dharana dhyana you know samadhi so they like that oh okay I don’t know I haven’t attended Japanese yoga classes so I don’t know exactly how they preach I know how I do it in China okay I think I am really eager to move on to China but just one question so you made a significant difference a significant point here that it’s not that we are teaching yoga in our temples rather they are inviting us to speak and at their forums we are going and speaking so if they are teaching yoga kirtan you know so I got things started when they got to temple I said you gotta make kirtan mele 12 hour kirtans 10 hour kirtans you know so people can come and go and say please and that brought a lot of Japanese in and we let every one of them lead for 15 minutes anyone who was willing to do it and it really opened up everything and really loosened up the relationships between the Indians and the Japanese also that’s more kirtan more kirtan where it’s inside outside it’s in the street in your house in their house their yoga school but kirtan but then philosophy also oh okay so they know what they are doing that’s amazing so two three different things two things before we move on to China so overall you if you want to define success of our outreach so one thing which you mentioned is you mentioned several times is the number of books distributed that is one significant marker of success from what I have read in Prabhupada’s and other places it seems that Prabhupada when devotees gave reports it was one book distributed and of course another was temples being built and third is that maybe how many devotees how many people became devotees in terms of they’re coming for the programmes or becoming initiated so in the outreach in Japan which definition of success do you consider as primarily indicative of the effectiveness of our outreach well book distribution of course but then Japanese are getting initiated this and now we need to work on getting more the Indians initiated you know cultivate cultivating most of the Indians that are initiated they kind of were already cultivated in India before they came but they have to get into cultivating make not just donations the Japanese did like I said there it’s a very family very friendly affair the way they work with each other the way these devotees preach to new people and they just bring them in and then after a while they want to get initiated they start chanting and they just read the books and they come up so we’ve got two initiations coming up soon one Japanese girl and one I think he’s Japanese but he’s from Brazil he’s a Japanese guru what there’s a big Japanese community in Brazil some of them they moved to Japan oh okay interesting so it turned out he’s been connected for 20 years with devotees but he didn’t he only recently met devotees in Japan he was connected with some kind of radio show that just plays kirtan stuff on Hare Krishna radio anyway they’re coming that’s amazing and overall at any level but working towards initiation because it’s Japan you know there’s 120 million Japanese oh that’s that is a significant number okay and Maharaj how much do you see say temples as important for I don’t know what do you call it in Japan we’ll call it western outreach or you can just say Japanese outreach how important do temples play a role because especially in India temples are very significant and many devotees many projects are centred around building big temples in the west as far as America is concerned and there are different opinions temples do attract Indians but how effective are temples in attracting people from the local demographic is open to question so how do you see the role of temples in Japan well like you said it attracts Indians and that’s good in one sense because we want them to they are souls and they’re probably like probably said the covering and the Indians is not so thick but they need cultivation also so if we take it today just want to come and see the deity and go away we want to cultivate them and that’s but that happens but it’s not like India of course you build a temple Lokenas only built that temple in a remote village and immediately thousands of people are coming every temple they’ve built in India it’s like that now it wasn’t like that in the beginning I was a Jew in the beginning and hardly anybody was coming but gradually they saw how nice it was and then they weren’t coming but for the local people you know we have to be personal we have to get out we have to meet people let them know you know what make friends with people they’re not going to come just because the deity is there if they do come they’re looking for knowledge or looking for a new life they’re looking for something even if they come to the temple because that’s the address they find they’re not coming just to give a donation to the deity and go away you know they’re looking for Krishna so we have to be there to give it to them we have to be personal we have to be loving all those things and then the temple they like to come to the temple they like to see the deity you know the nice atmosphere and everything that’s also good but more than that they need the personal care one-on-one or you know small groups which is what’s happening in Bhaktivriksha in many countries even in India I saw in Norway they had like 30 some Bhaktivriksha programmes or something you know where people study in small groups and they really there’s similar types of people get together and comfortable in somebody’s home you know not having to worry about all the formalities the temples are great for festivals and you know like you said attracting the temple the Indians and it doesn’t necessarily attract at least in any other country the same way as in India okay so you are saying that more than if I understand right more than the culture of seeing the deities the temple is also a place for a spiritual community building where people feel welcome supposed to be an educational institution you know right yeah that is true conquest you know temple it should have you know playgrounds and you know cooking classes and so many things like the manor or something you know where they have so many different things going on and always do that like Tokyo at land costs a fortune and it’s so packed up oh so that’s itself I’ve heard about this challenge even in say in America also the bhakti centre is growing and Brooklyn you are also in Brooklyn for devotees to come and stay anywhere nearby in that area is almost impossible it’s so expensive yeah Brooklyn is amazing you know now across the street there’s a holiday inn at 12 or 17 floors or something next door there’s an even hotel which is pretty nice two blocks down there’s some other really opulent looking hotel it doesn’t have a name and two blocks further down is a Hilton hotel you know and five minutes walk from the temple and these new condos apartments starting at a million dollars and you know for a studio and all around the temple like Radha Govinda attracted all these people so from what I understood actually Brooklyn temple is probably among the few Iskcon temples which are like large temples and are also in the main stream of the city maybe the LA temple is one but LA temple is more like distributed we have one temple structure and then we have other places but Brooklyn is a whole building we don’t have many places like that Manor is out of the city in London even the temples in Sydney or Melbourne Melbourne is not very big Sydney is also it’s not that big I don’t think any other place we have that big temples in the main stream of the metropolis in outside India yeah but anyway Brooklyn is there and it’s coming up from the you know trouble yes that is a whole different subject maybe you could discuss sorry not everyday lot of the book distribution restaurant is growing everyday people are coming for other classes okay and when we talk about about Japan it’s from what I understand it’s officially a secular country so Hinduism is also one of the officially recognised religions over there or do we present ourselves as Hindus or do we just say we are presenting yoga philosophy or how do we broadly position ourselves there I think now you know the devotees are preaching to the Japanese they stress more on yoga philosophy I mean myself even when I used to distribute a lot of books there I always said Indono Tetsugaku Indian philosophy and a lot of people like that and then you know they are like for real you know so I stressed on philosophy as knowledge of the soul that’s what I said to people even on the street and I think that’s how they are preaching because they are really trying to teach Bhagavad Gita and talking to people a lot it used to be very quick sales you know people like to give a donation quick and sometimes very big donations now it’s not like that but there is a lot of people that want to talk for a long time and want an association and have questions so that you know is going on because these new devotees are not in the ashram they are not they are independently sustaining their lives and they just want to preach they want to share what they got exactly how they share it I haven’t heard how they talk to people but it’s working it’s definitely working and one girl is a yoga teacher and she got all her students and then she just called up other yoga schools all over the country and told them they should buy Bhagavad Gita and selling like 20 or 30 at a time discussions and so but but Japan if I go back to Japan is officially secular country so there is no hostility to Krishna consciousness or Hinduism not at all that when the Americans after the war they wrote the Constitution so they it’s complete freedom of religion oh okay but they the Japanese you know they like the communists they said no religion makes people want religion right the Japanese religion is fine you can do whatever you want if you can’t succeed in the material world but now it’s different somehow or other people are much different and they want it’s not religion we’re not I don’t think anybody’s promoting religion they’re promoting lifestyle and you know bliss and all the things you know that I’m not talking religion so like when I first came the Japanese devotees were there told me Japanese hate religion and I went out distributing we had a magazine and they did today made it trying to not look like a religion look like some mundane thing but it had articles about you know chanting but I found many people ask me what religion is this so I just say this is the original religion is the oldest religion and that’s how I developed my approach to people I just say this is the oldest philosophy this is the oldest religion and people would be interested in Buddha’s incarnation of Krishna they’re not fanatic Buddhists there at all oh okay the Buddhist temples for funerals more or less and some ceremonies and then they have for marriage they have the Shinto Japanese Hinduism and a lot of people for they know they get married in a Christian marriage or something but it’s all just to show very few people really seriously practise anything but they can appreciate so anyway that now it’s just they’re going out they like to class you want to know I don’t know about to stole so you made an interesting point that Japanese Constitution was written by Americans so how much is the how much is the overall atmosphere there similar to the West you were from America so what all you know about America well they try to copy you know so they dress is the same you know like everywhere in the world now externally everything’s the same okay but everybody’s Hollywood you know everywhere in the world in American television and all that so rock and roll you know so the original culture there’s still there in many ways what I little prejudice but you see they kind of preserve the unpleasant parts of their fanatic parts of their culture and they leave aside all the good parts oh okay so you’re talking about the Japanese Buddhist culture or the Japanese just a general culture which is of course comes from Buddhism but still at least they take off their shoes when they go in the house and they’re respectful and they don’t like to get in fights and everything you know but sometimes in inside they’re really fighting but they hide it it’s too crowded there they can’t make they have to tolerate oh okay but you know it’s not everybody anywhere but like I said more and more they are yoga schools are everywhere you know and now it’s like same thing America every every gym you know for working out they have a yoga section and physical fitness of different kinds and then there’s I don’t know all of them but Sai Baba was really big in Japan for a while so that I don’t think people but it made people think about India even the Japanese government sent people to India to find out why they’re joining why Japanese are joining Sai Baba so it’s you know different things come and go and never as big as these other ones but more and more because those books are out there and it’s just everywhere the books are having an effect many people read them but we never meet them they’re all over the country you know okay that’s so overall you feel quite optimistic about the growth prospects for Krishna Consciousness in in Japan as of now the way you have seen things over the last well after I heard these reports just yesterday yes very much I mean I was really kind of carrying on just you know be out of duty or something for many years and not results weren’t coming visible visible results weren’t coming but like I said this is in the last few years five years maybe one by one some Japanese get initiated and they want to share it with other Japanese and now it’s just they’re really on fire so and it’s not just that they’re trying to distribute books and get on the newsletter they don’t even care about that they’re just trying to do it you know to please their guru or whatever so then you know I have a hell bottom orange comes there by Shashika such a day and everybody’s doing more and more to inspire people from different angles that’s wonderful and can we shift to China now because China is a whole different universe so yeah yeah I wasn’t sorry yeah you can start with I don’t think Prabhupada ever visited China directly isn’t it no he did visit Japan a few times this is the 50th anniversary of his first visit to Japan okay so sorry three times okay so that’s remarkable three times so then China he didn’t visit because of the hostilities between the two countries legally it was not possible for a Hindu preacher it wasn’t very difficult for anyone to visit China in those days anyone but Japan he went to negotiate with China yes that is a well-known meeting about the stack of cards and visiting cards the amazing thing is that they gave him credit and the policy was if you buy from Japan you have to pay cash in advance if you sell to them you have to give them credit but they gave Prabhupada credit now I heard different versions one was that they really saw that Prabhupada was a saintly and they really respected him another was that they somehow could see that he was going to sell a lot of books so they wanted his business so they they were printing a million back to Godhead back in those days a million? yeah a million every month that was the main book at the time and then they did the TLC but then when the Krishna book came and that’s what really set off the first big book distribution in the world, in America and the rest of the world and they printed that and they printed the first Canto second Canto and the first volume with third Canto huge, when they came it was three, two shipping containers full, big containers this first big order and that’s when the devotees went really wild in America for book distribution so Japan got out of credit they had super high quality and at that time because of the money exchange it was very cheap then somehow the money changing values change and the BBT had to switch over to printing in America now they print in China and India and looking for the prices so they did a big contribution and Guru Kripa’s party, bless their souls they were very heavy but they gave a huge amount of money to Prabhupada so that Vrindavan could be built, Juhu also and Mayapur to some extent Japanese got a lot of punya for that, they didn’t really know what they were doing but they were very generous to give donations that’s amazing so now Prabhupada, step by step Krishna helped them so two points here before we go to Jai Hind, since you brought Dainapon, so are we still is the company still alive and are we still working with them because you mentioned earlier that getting books printed is it’s still a big company but it’s too expensive to print in Japan ok and so does BBT itself print its own books in in Japan now or do we work with some publisher or some printer they print in China oh in China and get it, ok and when I was there I printed the first Bhagavad Gita I did in Japan we had a friend there got us a good deal then China, India mostly China so the Hong Kong BBT much cheaper and the recent Bhagavad Gita was printed in China ok and Maharaj, do you also encourage the printing of some bridge books or which books do you primarily distribute and do you feel there is a need for some other books also which can make Krishna Consciousness more accessible to people yeah, one girl is printing one now she is Russian and she is a disciple of Chaitanya Chandracharan ok and he is a super bridge preacher so there is one book called Karma, she got translated and is getting it ready to print oh we need everything coming back was very very popular then oh ok but right now Bhagavad Gita is just going like mad the devotees want more books also we need the regular books, we don’t have them so much running out we don’t have we have Leela Amrita SSR Leela Amrita was very popular but that is also out of print so something has to be done I am a little helpless on that that is another story people are getting hungry for it they actually want the books like I said previously it was they would give donations and take the book obviously some people were reading them now they want the book it is not so easy to just get donations because they had a lot of economic difficulties but a lot of people want the book of course they still spend money wildly just like everywhere but it is just a big change and now that I see all these young devotees really enthusiastic about everything, they love kirtan they love prasadam, they love to study they come to so many classes every week online practising all the instruments that is fascinating and the ukulele kirtan they all carry every one of them has a ukulele on their back so they are going on and on what is a ukulele? what is that? it is that little tiny like guitar four string ok ok it is very attractive and it does not scare people but you can take it you can take it anywhere so one girl started that they all picked up on it it is very easy to learn oh ok fascinating so you are quite open to having non-traditional instruments in the kirtan also? the kirtan the instruments that is about the only one sometimes they do a show in a club they have not been able to do that now because of COVID but it was getting very popular and then they have guitar and everything harmonium drums but it is very simple it is very straight oh ok the ukulele just really works good because they can just have it with them anywhere and people are just not intimidated by it it can get really close to people ok that is interesting and that is the thing because there is no restriction on where you can go and chant you can chant on any street corner anywhere you want and there is no law against it as long as you keep moving because the police anytime a group of people crowd together they make you move if you get 4 or 5 people watching for 5 minutes the police will just pop up out of the ground so you have to move but they never stop they just say you have to move ok that is fascinating yeah so now the Beatles were very popular there George Harrison was really popular My Sweet Lord was a hit there top 10 back in the day so overall it seems that there are 4 broad ways in which kirtan is one yoga is another book distribution is third and then some kind of education educational courses study groups 4 broad ways in which things seem to be growing I giving online bhagavatam classes we only have one volume of the first candle so I am kind of going over it with a fine tooth comb to get them reading it and hopefully they will want to translate and get more books oh ok makes sense prasadam of course prasadam is very important everywhere ok so when we do prasadam do we have Indian cuisine or do we make Japanese cuisine or mix of both or what do we do its Hare Krishna fusion what does that mean its Hare Krishna fusion some kind of Indian but not exactly ok so you mentioned Japanese they don’t like hot chillies and stuff so that’s interesting so you also mentioned that you are saying Indian food and Indian restaurants are also popular in Japan is a genre of food itself there are so many Indian restaurants oh and these are visited by non-Indians by local Japanese a lot of them are Nepalese but Indian restaurants there are many many but there is only one or two that are vegetarian ok now because I am asking Chinese food has become a whole genre in itself Chinese cuisine or Italian cuisine I don’t know if Indian food has become that influential a genre outside India not in the same way not in the same way yes that’s true they come to the Indian restaurants but they like to spicy chicken or something vegetarian Indian food is not known at all yes Maharaj and since you brought up vegetarianism veganism is very big in in the west how much is that part of the contemporary Japanese cultural scene scenario I think a big majority of the vegetarians are vegans now but is vegan also significant demographic there are a lot of good number of people who are becoming vegan there also it’s not really really big but it is growing ok it was Japanese vegetarian the first vegetarians in America were brown rice people it’s coming from Japan sorry what brown rice people yes in Japan it’s called it’s kind of like a religion brown rice unhomed rice and no dairy and all these kind of things and vegetables but the Japanese picked up on the American and McDonald’s is the number one restaurant oh ok KFC is number two so but it’s changing to some extent more and more vegetarian restaurants like devotees made one and people were coming from very far away but then more and more vegetarian restaurants opened and then not so many are coming anymore oh ok but still we have devotees have one or two that are still doing Osaka we have she had the Indian restaurant already she became a devotee so she became a vegetarian vegetarian oh ok with the economy the restaurant business is way down in Japan because of the pandemic or in general before even before also ok and then the pandemic even more because many places are closed yes that is true but they love facade and then cooking cooking classes are very popular they want to know vegetarian cooking some of them are doing online vegetarian cooking oh ok I’m just trying to encourage them to do something to everybody get online get on open up to Facebook and read the biography to do something so they’re doing that they have babies they can’t really go out so much but they do things like that all right so it’s a fascinating place up and down so it was down for a long time but it came back up oh ok I give the example like you see on the television like somebody’s in the hospital and the thing is going like this so it means they’re alive you know if it flatlines it’s dead so even if you’re going down at least you’re still alive you know and you’re going to have to come up right so this is how it goes everywhere yeah that is true so overall you feel that there are many avenues and your your overall mood is let devotees start doing whatever they can and then we will see what works and that can be done praise them encourage them to do more tell everybody else about what they’re doing you know try to you know enliven everybody hmm so that’s wonderful so maybe we can shift to China now and yeah ok so how much time do you have because we probably need at least half an hour to an hour to discuss about China you can do it another time if you feel I have another about an hour okay so China I was a little bit involved in the very beginning sorry to interrupt you before we move ahead this one question about Japan so currently how many centres do we have how many devotees do we have and just some some overall idea about the the situation in Japan before we conclude Tokyo we had the big temple radical which is becoming popular and but I guess there’s no there’s a few people live there okay but then we have these devotees preaching in their houses and they’re really preaching centres and people come over their house all the time they’re very wide open which is not normal Japanese culture normally people don’t go to each other’s house but somehow they opened up like that and they really like it and I don’t know how many I know two main ones but in these yoga schools also because they’re having regular classes in the yoga schools or regular cure times and some of them start their own independent programmes in their yoga schools so I’m not sure how many exactly number devotees is nothing spectacular there’s probably been about 90 or so initiated in all these years but it’s increased we’re getting steadily steadily more people getting initiated okay and do we have like smaller centres of India we have the concept of satellite centres not be a full not officially not officially we have one but due to the family and the jobs they have they can’t have like regular programmes every once a week or every two weeks or something but again some of the devotees are yoga teachers and they have a lot of students and they make a lot of kirtan programmes and distribute a lot of books and cultivate people in different ways and when it has a yoga school she’s also an astrologer but she preaches she’s a big preacher so okay and for a little bit Okinawa one girl that’s really fired up and she gets a lot of people for her ukulele cure times and lessons she’s a super musician sexy famous so she makes programmes and gets everybody changing gets all the musicians together like that going on it’s got a long way to go to spread everywhere people know about it a little bit everywhere that’s wonderful so roughly do you have any estimate of how many devotees actually it’s a little difficult to count because how do we define a devotee but in terms of either attendance to programmes or initiation or broad connection well they just had the John must to me those kind of programmes a lot of people come and nowadays a lot like well for proper his appearance is almost all Japanese they quite big crowd and we have a lot of Russian young people that are devotees there some of them are already initiated somewhere getting initiated many of them are coming from Chandracharan online so does he preaching Japanese or he preaches in Russian but he has Russians are everywhere so he has big following everywhere makes a lot of devotees oh okay and it’s bridge preaching some people accuse him of not being straightforward but he’s very straightforward and really brilliant preacher but he just knows how to bring people in he’s totally charming and the Russians are very good at interfacing with the Japanese they get along really good okay so there is not so in the in the second world war there’s hostility between Japan and China now it is not so much there is it no no not anymore China is begging Japanese tourists to come Japan is begging Chinese tourists to come Japanese stores and stuff for part-time workers they prefer Chinese Chinese students they say they work much better the Japanese have got a little spoiled by all this success and the money they don’t have that really hard-working ethic anymore so there’s always campaigns to bring more lots of Chinese tourists I don’t know now with the COVID and everything but there was so many Chinese tourists coming to Japan so many Japanese going to China but in China the devotees are all Chinese oh yes so now we move on to China it seems that there are multiple challenges one of course is that China is officially an atheistic country and then relationship between India and China also not the best so how or it’s only that is only a recent phenomenon the last few years yeah it’s historically you know Chinese who studied they know that their whole culture came from India like one devotee is an academic and he teaches Chinese culture in the Confucius University or something and he takes tour groups of Chinese businessmen to India to show them how it came from India oh and people they don’t object to that no they like it the government is encouraging Chinese culture but then if we show that Chinese culture is coming from India doesn’t that affect their nationalistic pride on their search for nationalistic identity I don’t know it’s hard to know exactly because it’s conflict you know Prabhupada mentioned in the first canto how now there’s border trouble with China and India now that’s come back again it’s crazy but as far as preaching there it was all in Hong Kong in the beginning and not making any devotees I used to visit there so I was involved in getting the first Chinese person to join and gradually got into China and I didn’t go for a long time because I was caught up in a lot not only the Asia but I always go into Israel and Greece and West Africa which is a whole another world if you want to know about that so Maharaj when you went in China I presume you in China you cannot go as a monk especially as a Hindu monk no we go dressed in ordinary clothes and you have American passport so that makes it easier or tougher or how does it work no problem visas are easy they give you 10 year visas now but now the border is closed it was 10 year visa okay that’s quite that’s quite complicated in America and China oh okay and in China because we don’t have temples so or at least so what is the official position is Hinduism banned or is it that you cannot have public displays of Hindu religion it’s very hard to know you know the devotees do not present themselves as Hindus oh okay a yoga culture or something officially Hindu is not a recognised religion but with the business ties between India and China there are a good number of Indians there also so do they practise their religion privately like in the Middle East or what do they do they can do it yeah just like in the Middle East okay and overall they just they’re Japanese are full of anxieties and tension and many things with the Chinese they look the same kind of but they’re very relaxed they love to get together in big groups and party kind of thing and dance in the streets and everything so somehow or other when they got started and you know there’s a lot of devotees there and they got all the Bhagavatam translated and every book you can think of practically Chaitanya Charya they haven’t finished it but you know devotees just take it on their own and they have Mahabharata and they have Radhanath Swami’s book and you know and their BBT has done the whole Bhagavatam gotten it legal with the government so okay that’s interesting so then here the book everything is at home you know except yoga schools and it’s Kirtan yoga oh okay that’s interesting so homes means we have Chinese people’s homes or Indians home or whatever works out Chinese is not that many Indians Oh okay Chinese apartment some places they have an apartment they use just for meetings okay once in a while they get a little trouble from somebody so far no big thing we don’t talk about it so much but okay all the devotees are friendly with the local government and they don’t make any trouble they’re all good citizens so I mean I don’t want to create any trouble so maybe you can you can broadly discuss what we can discuss over there so from what I would just say that you know it’s the same everywhere and in Hong Kong I started out by having yoga classes that ended up with meditation you know mantra meditation and then picked out people that were interested and China when they first came you know different there’s a lot of older ladies joined very serious practitioners maybe they were Buddhist serious Buddhist or something some students and they’re just finding their own way you know now I don’t know exactly because we haven’t been able to go there for a long time but I have contact with a lot of them I have two classes a week and the Friday morning was about 180 devotees online oh okay they join for one class or different classes at different times well they have a lot of classes you know a lot of different devotees giving classes and all the foreign preachers different days different times and they’re all like that I have another one that’s a Tuesday night that ends up about 120 some of them are coming after some other class they come with the Friday morning Bhagavad Gita is about 180 something like that maybe some of the others that have been there longer they have even maybe 250 years so you know that’s one way the zoom boom has been you know that’s one advantage of the COVID I got everybody online and we can get together much easier than having to go somewhere but hmm yes so this is so this is primarily through the yoga medium or in China how do we I don’t know exactly I just know the yoga one is big okay like for instance I have one disciple she’s quite well known yoga teacher and she very brilliant organiser hmm she made a tour once with myself and Lokanath Swamy okay I remember Maharaj had told me about he had come on my podcast also so he had also before that we had talked about this doing kirtans at that time she printed 3000 Bhagavad Gita’s for that on her own and we went to many cities and she got big crowds you know students have their own yoga schools and people paid and they get a Bhagavad Gita they get kirtan they get a Bhagavad Gita class little prasanna so she’s still doing things like that and I think many have done and they’re finding other ways businessman is cooking one devotee is really big with his cooking classes but it you know so much philosophy people really like him okay and so but even in the in private you can do kirtans also is it like that yeah they do kirtan not outside so much sometimes devotees go in the park and chant nobody you know they don’t promote themselves okay so even kirtans are possible that’s interesting so kirtan yoga no kirtan means public kirtans are also allowed they do it not very much but some devotees do it different places okay and is China also it’s a large country so is it also internally culturally quite diverse in terms of I think so okay so when you travel is it to the main cities or you go to various places also many different places there’s so many big cities in China oh okay and they’re not big compared to the biggest cities in China but compared to other countries they’re really big cities yeah a million people is not a big city in China that’s true so actually a million people in India is also not a very big city we have huge but Mumbai has more than a crore population so it’s the same thing it’s just they there’s a lot of online stuff going on that was primarily started during the pandemic no before even many many devotees preach online and they make an online shop with Indian things and books and they have yoga books and all kinds of books along with Prabhupada’s books okay so yoga books specifically written for yoga audiences from a yoga perspective other yoga books not our books although there’s some devotees that have written yoga books a few of them actually big famous yoga teachers they organise big at least they did big festivals of yoga with a lot of kirtan and philosophy that’s amazing I don’t, I’ve not been in amongst the devotees at the moment they’re organising very nicely so many different groups and so many different aspects and so they can really seriously study and everything they have so many devotees oh okay not compared to India yeah of course yeah so they can also it’s different than Japan because they’re all Chinese when I first came to Japan we had only Japanese devotees and when all the Indians are coming it’s a whole nother world you know to bring it all together the nirvishishas and the shunyavadis have to come together but that’s also breaking down by kirtan everybody’s getting used to the fact that you’re not the body you know and that’s the biggest problem that we identify with the body it’s a challenge so as far as myself I went to Thailand also okay so just coming back to China so is it is it just that we have to do it discreetly or is there the fear of detection and persecution from what say for example what we know about say Krishna consciousness in Soviet Russia the devotees were actively under threat of being persecuted is it like that or is it like sorry they never had any problem like that okay so in some ways it is like the Middle East as long as we keep to follow their rules they don’t really have trouble with us government you just nice people you know they’re all good citizens they they might know you know about them but they see they’re nice people I guess just can go on okay and so when they when people are attracted to say yoga or kirtan eventually do they also in we’re talking China do they also take up chanting and serious bhakti practises small percentage like everywhere else yeah of course I think that’s everywhere it’s like in Bombay Baladeva Prabhu said when they go to a university they might start out with 200 students yes and at first they can’t really preach very much at the university won’t like it so they just joke and talk casually and have a little kirtan gradually they cultivate some and he said after two years they get two devotees that they have it all you know it’s not like everybody everybody’s but some do same thing in Japan some take it up seriously in different different degrees some just like to have the devotees come and chant in their yoga school but personally they’re not practising or they like other gurus to come also you know they like everybody but you know they’re reading our bhagavad-gita so we just try to keep going like it’s like whatever way you can reach people like everywhere and a lot of the devotees were practising Buddhism of some kind there’s different kinds of Buddhism but one is called pure land Buddhism they have that in Japan also where you go to the land of Buddha and you be with Buddha and they’re vegetarian for the most part and quite personal so a lot of them when they contact Bhagavad-gita and more philosophy they really like it okay so so Bhagavad-gita itself is not a problem it is so we can distribute Bhagavad-gita also in through our programme you said that Mataji had printed several hundred copies of the Bhagavad-gita thousand okay so distributing Bhagavad-gita is also not a problem I know in the programmes it’s a yoga programme and Bhagavad-gita is a yoga book oh okay you know they’re just they’re very smart people they just know how to do it I didn’t know exactly you know what they’re thinking but so far you know a little keep cool you know you can make a big show but like I said everywhere even in America we need to do that in India you know the home programmes of Bhaktiviksha the intimate programmes of a few people getting together it’s really important if you want to cultivate people so from both your focus in what you mentioned in China as well as in Japan earlier it seems ultimately it’s the personal connections that will help people to grow whatever be the initial pathways whether it is yoga or kirtan or whatever personal thing it ultimately does even say in India if somebody comes to the temple because they’re naturally pious attracted to temples but unless somebody becomes friends with them they’re not going to become devotees okay the Christians in America they have statistics on everything you know and they say that people will come to a religion and join maybe for so many reasons but they stay because they make friends okay we have to learn to be friends with people and I think this is everywhere yeah and Prabhupada also sometimes we may emphasise that Prabhupada was philosophically penetrating and Prabhupada was strong and uncompromising and those are all true but Prabhupada attracted the hearts of his disciples and that was through the personal connections and I think that’s what in the early years of our movement when we’re expanding that’s what devotees were doing with new people also quite vibrantly yeah like if you hear see these memories of devotees who met Prabhupada a little bit closely nobody was saying oh he knew so much he had so much knowledge they said he had so much love he was so kind that’s what attracted them and the devotees were trying to be like that and as long as we try to be like that we’re going to get more and more hmm that’s remarkable for me I’ve been trying to stress that and a few of these older devotees in Japan they’re my disciples in the last years they gradually did that come to my house chanted Hare Krishna learned to cook learned the harmonium and then they get more and more coming then those people like to go to the temple of course they like to see the deities and the beautiful decorations and that also helps them but to make them real devotees we need a personal association so I think this is a critical point that there may be specific cultural challenges or specific situational dynamics but beyond it all if we can have this what Rupa Goswami talks about the sixfold exchange Rupa Goswami never cared about that he just loved everybody because it was an important person Krishna and that attracted everybody so that’s what I said our own prejudices we don’t see that so much we see the body we see that things that aren’t even our own idea which is not even true we think we know what someone’s thinking but especially when you have the language barriers so Maharaj you made this very striking statement Prabhupada never saw that but we also see Prabhupada often makes strong statements about particular demographics whether it will be we need not go into the specific codes but say people of particular gender or a particular skin colour or there are some codes of Prabhupada which seem to be quite strong and they can be very controversial in today’s world so yeah that’s another seminar so what you are saying is that that was not the that was never prominent in people’s minds when they were approaching Prabhupada or no way I mean okay interesting I don’t know if you’ve seen a you know Krishna Nandini huge preacher in the Grihastha team yes yes yeah have you ever heard her tell her story about how that family met Prabhupada sorry which one are you they’re black you know so-called black I mean the right article there’s no black people there’s only dark skin you know it’s not the people there’s no white people it’s all the skin colour only and we’re too much to absorb in skin colour it’s difficult to overcome but anyway her mother they were very very religious they had been going to different Christian and not being satisfied and the mother I don’t know somehow she was writing to Prabhupada and Prabhupada was writing back she gave herself a spiritual name and Prabhupada used it in dealing with her then the temple president where they were in Cleveland said they couldn’t stay at the temple so they just packed their car up with about six or seven people and drove and drove and drove without knowing where they’re going and they got to Dallas and temple president said you can’t stay here you know this and they begged him they said we you know we have no place and so he said okay one night this is a family about six or seven coloured people in Dallas Texas so then they found out Prabhupada was coming the next day they had no idea they thought Prabhupada was in India so they got really excited so the next day the mother went demanded they want to see Prabhupada and they were trying to keep her away you know like they try to keep everybody away in those days Prabhupada found out he said no he knew her he knew her by name and he said what do you want and she said I want to get you know my family initiated Prabhupada initiated five of them right on the spot really we don’t know them nobody knows them Prabhupada said no gave them all initiation and they’re all still devotees and Krishna Nandini has 10 kids they were all devotees oh I didn’t know this story that’s amazing yeah it’s amazing you can look it up on the internet she tells it so what you’re saying by this is that that Prabhupada focused on the you know I calculate a lot of things he said is because people feel that way like he said even the black Africans are becoming devotees but he was not against he liked he loved the Africans to become the Buddhists but he would say that because people have this idea that they’re so uncivilised so he was just trying to show how powerful the process is even the Chinese even people they can’t believe it you know people have so much prejudice so he was saying things but you know you can’t find any group of race or everybody’s the same you know there’s good and bad people all right so that’s amazing and Prabhupada was like that everywhere he just and he wanted the local people and so he didn’t he didn’t think in America these hippies and they’re all stoned and they’ve been having was a sex and how can they be devotees he just said this is the spirit soul that wanted to hear about Krishna and he got right through to the soul immediately so what you’re saying is that Prabhupada focused on so if you want to continue Prabhupada’s legacy or continue Prabhupada’s mission more than the letter of more than the literal letter of whatever he has said we need to have that spirit of compassion and connection that is love kindness and the karmas are coming up but you know I saw an internet some doctor was listing 10 essential books your children should read and the titles of about seven of them at least was kindness all about kindness and how you should be kind you know that’s not like the stories I when I was a kid we got violent stories you know Hansel and Gretel and stuff killed the rich and they’re changing I think it’s all because of Prabhupada’s influence there’s so many people reading Bhagavad Gita everywhere and they even unconsciously but they’re being affected by it oh okay that’s very interesting I don’t know but everybody believes in reincarnation you know it’s all because of Prabhupada so other places you know Thailand for instance is my zone yes so Thai people are very much Buddhist we are Buddhist but they don’t practise but they very much identify and they like to go to the temples they give a lot of money and they only eat meat the monks eat meat oh okay Thailand is often perceived more as a tourist destination with maybe this is again a prejudice that I have but it’s like a tourist destination with a lot of sensuality and other things that is there but still there is also some religion over there is that or some spiritual inclusion so many Buddhist temples and of course they’re one of the main tourist attractions the daytime they go to the temples nighttime they go to clubs the people are they pray a lot they love to pray to the Buddhist temples and even the Hindu Durga temple or something they love to come and offer instance and pray oh even Hindu Durga temples yes Hindu temples so you’re saying people means the Buddhist people or in general people will come to the temples everybody Thai people this one in Bangkok Durga temple and of course they have all the other even Krishna along the side but it’s always packed up busy with people praying offering incense so overall are these temples built by Hindu immigrants Indian immigrants who went there recently they were built a long time ago okay there’s not very many but Thai people like to come and pray any kind of gods oh okay so when I went there there was no Thai devotees there was one and he joined in America and his sister joined with him two sisters and then he he was such a good devotee that he didn’t want him to leave Chicago finally he came back to Thailand and I just went there and stayed with him when we went on just two or three of us and I convinced him to translate he dedicated his life for translating Ram Lakshman and he’s just like a genius you know and humble at the same time very special person he got his acupuncture degree in like record time and he’s a graduate engineer and you know everything but so he just translated and we have a lot of books now and gradually gradually but then many many Nepalese came into Thailand running away from Burma and they’re all devotees a lot of them are already devotees and then we had so many of them and time went on they have children who grew up in Thailand speak Thai went to school and they’re very good at preaching and Thai people so now Thai people are coming much more and things are growing okay yeah it just you know I was at first I said Ram do you really want all these Nepali people because they were coming to all the Hainan and it became all Nepalese you know but the Thai were just going by and all friendly but very unlikely to get serious but now because a lot of devotees are different ways one family that husband and wife are both teachers at the university and they have a lot of contact with Thai people they’re Nepali but they speak Thai and you know just so gradually gradually these Thai young people they can preach to the Thai people no problem whatsoever and they can communicate and relate to them really good so I’m getting more and more Thai people again there is no restriction no legal problems or anything there so you know just say I’m Buddhist that’s interesting and overall see now there will be several countries and I’m not sure how much we could discuss now but overall how much do you feel that so overall the receptivity toward Krishna consciousness in these places is it strongly negatively or positively impacted by by that coming to people through ISKCON or it doesn’t make much difference they don’t know what ISKCON is you know so it is basically they just accept it for what it is and so there also it is coming through yoga or not so much through yoga here now well now a few yoga teachers are joining but it was just through kirtan and books and one on one preaching in Thailand but then the Nepalese made a temple there was always a small temple but not much happening different personalities but then they made a temple but at first Thai people were coming because they just like gods you know they like to worship but not enough devotees spoke Thai to cultivate them but now these kids that grew up there they’re Thai citizens but they’re from Nepali background but their language is Thai their main language and they’re preaching really nicely so they’re doing similar because we want to get the local people you know and then when you get the Indians come they naturally come to any temple but then it makes people think it’s an Indian society which it’s not but it looks like that even in England they think the Hare Krishna is an Indian society the local people yeah I think that is a significant concern and it’s almost like a catch 22 situation for us in the western world that we need some people to come at least and if Indians are coming we don’t want to stop them from coming but then the just the fact that if there are too many Indians then local people don’t feel very comfortable coming over there so that is that is itself a challenge so that’s why we need you know like Dr. Vriksha or Dave Amritaswamy made his loft programme in New Zealand they just invite young people and they don’t have deities and Indians don’t come and then when they get cultivated they take them to the temple the Indians also can become very very good devotees like well you know everywhere in India and Middle East do miraculous things but people like you know birds of a feather flock together language blocks together it’s one of the things we have to that is very true our own we have to see these are spirit souls Krishna brought them here when we’re preaching we have to keep it Krishna brought them here we don’t care what kind of person they are Krishna brought them so they’re chosen so it’s very interesting and of course a really big issue is Indonesia where I went and that’s a long story okay so Bali is Hindu by so-called Hindu by culture so we grew very very quickly and people really liked it okay so overall if I understand right what you’re saying is that in these parts of the world people are you could say it’s not just from the self-help or self-development avenue it is also from the traditional cultural avenue like temples and going to temples for praying and worshipping from those avenues also people are interested yeah you know we can’t compete with these really opulent Buddhist temples that have many acres of land and big banyan trees and you know crematorium right in the middle of it and everything deities all over the place you know right we can’t compete with that but but we can meet people and give them you know Krishna when people ask me what’s the difference between Buddhist and Krishna I just say Krishna that’s the difference you know otherwise they have the you know in their scripture they have for their principles they have all the behaviour and supposed to be mercy and all these things but they don’t have Krishna you know this is what we have this different anywhere this green personality of God you know as preachers we have to have faith that we really believe it and that we can see these are spirit souls they’re not Chinese or Japanese or Thai or whatever they’re not Buddhist or Christians they’re spirit souls so one of the tenor that I’m getting from your discussion is that maybe are we overestimating the need for adjusting according to time, place, circumstance we focus more on connecting at a human level then whatever adjustments may be required they will happen organically and because how much to adjust according to local time, place, circumstance that itself is a big discussion in today’s world and not just in ISKCON but not just I would say discussion but even debate in ISKCON world today okay well some places there is legal restriction so we have to follow that very carefully but at least my opinion and you know we’re supposed to have the most personal philosophy so we have to get through to people to the heart touch the heart you know and there’s it’s not too ritual formalities if you do that then as far as organising the local people know how to do things in their place so let them do it their way but let them do it for Krishna they know how to they know their country they know what they can do they know how to do it and we have to let them do it but we have to catch them somehow or other and teach them connect them to Prabhupada let them read Prabhupada’s books you know start following the sadhana and they’ll take care of the rest can’t say you have to do this way you have to do that way you know when they want to learn deity worship of course there’s technical rules and regulations and stuff but how to organise and how to deal with the local people they know we can never learn from a book we should try to learn I should have taken the time before I went to Japan to seriously study the language but I didn’t think of that nobody told me that like the Mormons they have super language schools for any of their missionaries before they go out sorry what did you have? I didn’t get that part intensive language school for the country they’re going yeah for the country they’re going to oh okay they have the former missionaries that have been to that country teaching you know about these people and what you need to say to them and stuff they’re very advanced okay but you know as far as management every country they have their way of doing things and we can’t impose my way which is probably I’m not good at that anyway you know when Americans try to impose their way in any country it doesn’t work they have to let the local people manage on the ground all the you know McDonald’s, Coca-Cola they’re all managed by the local people but we have to be we have to be loving representatives of Krishna and connect them with Krishna so they can teach that otherwise you know we don’t have a society relationships we have all these relationships seminars I heard when you gave you know many are giving right hmm why do we have problems in relationships because we’re in a garlic platform that’s interesting so what you’re if I understand right Maharaj what you’re saying is that that Prabhupada also had to some extent like a decentralised approach where he from what I read Prabhupada spent a lot of time in India because in India often the devotees would get get say cheated with exorbitant prizes being charged but Prabhupada let the devotees in the west to lead the preaching and he did not get involved in the integrities of management in the west as he did in India so in one sense what you’re recommending is broadly following what Prabhupada did in in his outreach also yeah in everything he did you know internally and externally if we can do that we’d be you know we could have the whole world in our hand you know sorry what do you mean by internally and externally in this context well Prabhupada was so also absorbed in Krishna and scriptures and loving you know everybody he was really doing that although he was managing also incredible astuteness you know I just been reading Giri Raj book about Bombay you know Prabhupada never lost a beat but even after dealing with Mr. Nair in fighting and so much trouble he’d go and give a sublime class because he was always really depending on Krishna so he was teaching by example and we have to depend on Krishna when we try to do anything in any country the people deep down everybody is a spirit soul everybody is the same they all have animals also everybody has the same emotions same basic needs they’re just caught up in different coverings of the mind working in different ways that’s significant again so if I understand again if you understand right what you’re saying is that there is we do often emphasise Prabhupada’s internal mood of being absorbed in Krishna and his capacity to just as you said completely get connected with Krishna after dealing with managerial issues so that balance between internal and external is of course very important but here what you’re saying is that if we are reaching out to a large if we are going to reach out to a if ISKCON is to become a global movement then we need to give some amount of say freedom or leeway to the local devotees to know to decide how to adjust things how to present things that’s being discussed in the GBC at the moment and the Catholic Church they say they do that you know because even moral values and stuff different countries have different ideas and you can’t impose you know the American way on everybody the philosophy on how to deal with different things that are coming up because we can’t imitate Prabhupada when you see how expert he was at all kinds of things he never studied he was definitely guided completely by the Supersoul but he took advice from local people he let the local people go and bribe the politicians and stuff to get permits the devotees couldn’t do that the foreigners can’t do that that’s amazing and overall if so if you know based on your experiences in you know I may have 2-3 more questions before we conclude 2-3 so one is based on your overall experiences in spreading Krishna consciousness so would you consider this to be the probably most important thing that is required that developing personal relationships with devotees would that also mean that maybe we need smaller groups like you also mentioned study groups or something like that because when a big temple comes up individual devotees sometimes get lost or when people start belonging to a bigger group then the intimacy or the close connections that are there they sometimes get lost so how do we balance between say doing big projects and maintaining personal connections yeah that’s why this Bhaktivriksha you know that’s what it’s all about and it was taken from a Christian thing they call the cell church you know about that sorry what? the cell church something similar your body is made up of cells ok and they work together so they make these cells and actually Jayapataka Malki’s mother gave him the book it was called knocking on doors opening hearts or something and about the cell groups which is some Christians have the most successful churches you have to belong to these groups at maximum 16 members they have to make a new group they get up around 12 they have to start thinking who can be the leader to start another group and the church is based on that those are the ones that are very successful so he changed the name to Bhaktivriksha instead of calling it shepherd he called it some kind of leader you know but it’s the same basic idea you have a smaller group that gets together it’s informal but they just study it’s not a long long meeting don’t have a big big feast or anything snack and they all become friends and the Christians they group them up you know lawyers doctors nurses unwed mothers you know all these different groups children where they get the same kind of people together or they can relate to each other and be very comfortable and talk about the same problem engineers IT people they have separate groups but then when they get a lot of those they make the big churches so in India of course you can build a temple first people like that and then they make a lot of noise because they have these smaller groups oh okay everything has to work together that’s my I’m trying I haven’t succeeded in many places but yes my we have to be available in these big cities it’s so hard to travel so we need the online is helping a lot but we need many centres where people can easily access and just even if it’s just a small group of few people but they need a structure you know they’re studying studying something like in Japan one Japanese girl she moved to my poor like way long ago she’s one of the first devotees and got married there and she designs it all right amount of his clothes after graduating from Japanese fashion school and but then she studied everything and now she’s teaching but and everything online to the Japanese in Japanese and they love it you know and it’s growing pulling people in so but that group studying Bhakti Shastra they become good friends and they’re all taking the exams and all going to the same classes and then they become very strong and they become very attractive and they want to do more some of them will become teachers and just keep spreading so we need temples we need formality we need you know but it’s not that we need proper in America he didn’t stress building so many big temples but devotees did it anyway and then they get stuck sometimes with the burden maintaining last night here in Brooklyn everything got flooded subways were flooded the temple room was flooded everything was flooded it’s all dried up now but in the huge rain and some hurricane and the ceiling and roof is leaking you know you got to be fixing things constantly but home programmes are don’t cost anything everybody has their home already nobody has to fundraise or worry about getting the money to pay the rent or anything and gradually it’s become like a couple of these devotees in Japan are teaching Bhagavad Gita they’re teaching music they get supported also without trying for that they’re just trying to outreach and people support them because they like what they’re getting and they come to the temple and they support the temple also they make the temple alive new people come in that’s true so overall it does seem that we need to wherever the big temples actually have structures by which devotees can interact with one another and develop relationships that means smaller groups or something like that within the temple structure that is good otherwise it could lead to sort of too much of institutionalisation or even alienation and that needs to be avoided yeah it becomes impersonal you know yes Vahana that’s true so you need both you know people come we need big festivals where there’s a lot of devotees all together but then we need many other programmes like I keep telling the devotees in Africa the Christian church there’s so many of them you know but they all have a sign board Monday morning this Monday night this seminar every day is a different programme you know and so it attracts people to come different people come for different things so we need to offer all kinds of things I went to one Christian church in Hawaii Monday night was women’s substance abuse night Tuesday was men’s substance abuse night you know Wednesday Thursday was unwed mother’s night or something you know they take care of people my god that’s the world full of those people now you can’t reject can’t wait looking for pure devotees you know anybody who would come and listen hmm you know for living in the temple and everything we had to be more careful but so anyway we got to be personal so basically where people are I want to think I’m a sanyasi everyone should listen to me but even with all devotees you can’t be like that you got to get down on your knees sometimes and connect with people you know oh that’s true so this is hard to yeah so this is sorry I wish I could do that I guess I had a little success someplace oh the fact that for decades you have continued on and that things are picking up despite there being so many challenges that itself is remarkable yeah numbers are there so it looks like something but I know it’s not me that’s Krishna that’s your humility my Raj Krishna also needs potent instruments and I’m so grateful to you for sharing your experiences today my Raj thank you for the chance I hope it’s not too much about Africa and Israel and oh maybe we could talk about that in some other podcast in future yeah so I usually toward the end I try to summarise what we discussed should I try to do that my Raj or would you like to add something yeah yes so generally so today we discussed broadly on the topic of Krishna consciousness in in Southeast Asia we could say broadly so you focused mainly on Japan and then we discussed a little bit about other places also China and Thailand so you told about how after the post Prabhupada departure post Prabhupada phase of ISKCON because there was so much confusion you and chaos you felt you go to some other place and just focus on directly sharing Krishna consciousness started from the from the grassroots in Japan making the first devotees and distributing books and things like that and over the years things have been growing and we talked about the economic bubble growing and then bursting there and now there is a younger demographic which is so significant channel seems to be the yoga channel whereby which people are coming to us quite a bit and they see they are interested in learning about the Bhagavad Gita so if we can just present the Bhagavad Gita if we teach the Bhagavad Gita systematically then people do take up and grow and is remarkable to hear about how yoga teachers themselves like Buddhist monks are taking Bhagavad Gita in hundreds and significant numbers and they are they are sharing it and also your devotees who are yoga teachers or in general yoga teachers also doing that so yoga seems to be a big means in the contemporary world to reach out to people in Japan then also talked about eventually whether it is your kirtan also is quite big yoga or kirtan eventually we need to develop personal connections with people and so the temples are not so much temples are important more as centres for education and community development and not just for for ritual centred around deity worship of course it is an important but we need to have the perspective the priority is clear and then think in Japan where there is no while people still there is a older crowd who has respect for monks and because of the Buddhist tradition and they are quite open and the younger are more interested in in yoga and through that self-improvement and in general I think two three things which struck me where one was that we as a we provide inspiration and overall spiritual substance and then let the local devotees decide how best to present so several places where you mentioned about how the yoga programmes are going you said that now you have left that to the discretion of the local devotees to present and position appropriately so that model is I feel it’s also very sustainable because otherwise it becomes too much pressure on the leader and then also you mentioned about China there it’s through again kirtan and yoga kirtan and yoga are the ways by which we reach out and there is a significant interest even though officially publicly we can’t do anything but privately individually there are books being printed and distributed also in thousands and it’s not that there is threat actively but it is more of discretion is required as long as we are responsible citizens law-abiding then we can pursue Krishna consciousness and then you mentioned about Thailand and how there it’s more of a traditional culture people are interested in praying in temples and people are reaching out coming to our centres also over there and then toward the end what you focused on is that whether it gives example of several churches and how they offer you could say they serve people’s human needs, the substance abuse or unwed mothers and things like that so basically we need to become friends of people and have a loving connection and Prabhupada you told about incident of Prabhupada had those that whole family of five black people immediately he welcomed them in the temple initiated them in it was in Texas the whole point is that Prabhupada not because he had so much knowledge or he so cuttingly refuted others but because he connected with people with compassion and love and if we do that seeing everybody as a soul and avoiding prejudices, so the prejudices may come because of our own past pre Krishna conscious conception or sometimes even within Krishna consciousness we may develop some stereotypes but by that we can all move forward and we can all share Krishna consciousness and overall it does seem that things are moving forward in a optimistic way in a wonderful way as the numbers of Buddhist tuition is growing and people are becoming interested so if we can maintain that mood of loving connection and help people feel a sense of personal belonging then Krishna consciousness does have a bright prospects and much to look forward to anything you would like to add in conclusion Maharaj not add but we have faith that the holy name alone can render all benediction on humanity at large and that all these good things that are happening in the world like vegan is good and bad but you know environmental things people are being more kind they are talking about that they are trying to be that they are having night clubs with no alcohol and it’s all because of the Sankirtan movement that’s keeping Kali away from those people so they can do their thing and if we have full faith in that and just try to encourage do whatever you can to spread the chanting of the holy name you know that will control your own mind and that’s what’s going to help everybody otherwise we can’t help all the homeless people we can’t help all the cows in Vrindavan you know we can take care of a few but it’s the Sankirtan movement which includes all those things you said being loving everybody that’s you know everybody just that remembers Prabhupada the first time I ever felt loved in my life you know he loved me he didn’t love you know my face or my hair or my muscles or anything like that or my fancy dress he just loved me and he was completely personal it’s like everybody in a class with Prabhupada thought he was talking just directly to me yeah just like Krishna eating lunch with his friends and mystic power and he was he was talking to everybody intimate because he just knew the needs of the soul so we can learn that from his book and you’re doing so much you know much more than me so many so called second generation devotees who knows how many of them were Prabhupada disciples or Prabhupada you know and are just now empowered to do such amazing things all over the world devotees are doing so much in thinking of like you say bridge preaching but you know it’s just preaching but just how to reach out to more and more people you know yes he went to America he didn’t he was thinking he preached to the educated people in the so called high class but who came with all the hippies that the hippies turned out to be like dynamos you know because he said they knew what was wrong and what was right and then let him do it and let them distribute books in any way they wanted to in any way they could and you know the results came in we made a little disturbance here and there but in the long run it’s all good yes thank you and then you know get over any difficulties because Indians saved the movement Europe and America by coming forward and being able to donate then we have to deal with the fact that how to cultivate the local people in a room full of Indians but we can do that just by keeping separate rooms a little bit and having special classes so thank you very much for this thank you very much for your kind association this podcast and a lot of young devotees are doing incredible podcasts bringing up a lot of things and I think I hope a lot of the older devotees watch them and see what’s going on find out how a lot of young devotees are doing really amazing things that are not getting publicised anywhere because they’re kind of off and farmers and everything so all these things we want to do got to keep talking about we want farm projects we want not only big temple not only distributing books but we want everything probably big vision thank you very much thank you amazing how we couldn’t get together online the first time it said waiting for the host to start the meeting and then I try to do something else at the same time which usually on zoom doesn’t matter and I lost it but maybe it was still there but then it just kept saying wrong password wrong this wrong that so anyway it worked out okay thank you very much thank you few languages there spasibo and I’m always the stupidest guy in the room because I have to have a translator for him why well it’s a challenge because you have to depend on the translator and you don’t always know what they’re saying till you learn a little bit the language or know the person really well so that’s another challenge Krishna covers it Go Ranga Go Ranga thank you very much I look forward to your presentation in the future again sometime yes